An Excerpt
I am not usually at a loss for words and I am not at a loss at the moment. I begin to write and then delete and write and delete. I could not find the words to say this without feeling the best thing for me to do is to copy it here. Here is an excerpt from the book "Leap Before You Look" By Arjuna Ardagh
Introduction Pages xxv – xxvi
Until there is some kind of awakening, some kind of recognition of presence or grace, our relationship to the habits of personality will always be one of resistance and modification. This means that as long as we overlook the grace underlying all things, we only know the things themselves. When anger arises, we only know the anger. When fear is there, we only know the fear. Thus everything that arises is met with a commentary of should and shouldn’t.
When all one knows are feelings and thoughts and events that are constantly changing, then the only approach available is to struggle with them, to try to make things better. This means that we try to resist things as they are, or modify them, or cling to some things and try to make them more; but because things are always changing, there is no resolution, no peace. It is rather like watching TV, but forgetting that it is TV. All you know is changing the channel. As soon as you remember that you are watching TV, something else becomes available, which is to relax more deeply into the sofa and into the recognition that although you are watching TV, you are not contained within the world of the TV. Self-improvement is only about changing content; awakening is about liberation from the dimension of changing content. Only when you awaken to being that deeper presence does an alternative become available.
Youtube video on Translucence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_lFwRZPD4s
I am going to be at a Leap Before You Look weekend that Arjuna is giving in Clearwater, Florida September 5,6 and 7th.
John
